There are two fundamentally different views of the role of elections in policy formation. In one view, voters can affect candidates' policy choices: competition for votes induces politicians to move ...toward the center. In this view, elections have the effect of bringing about some degree of policy compromise. In the alternative view, voters merely elect policies: politicians cannot make credible promises to moderate their policies, and elections are merely a means to decide which one of two opposing policy views will be implemented. We assess which of these contrasting perspectives is more empirically relevant for the U. S. House. Focusing on elections decided by a narrow margin allows us to generate quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of a "randomized" change in electoral strength on subsequent representatives' roll-call voting records. We find that voters merely elect policies: the degree of electoral strength has no effect on a legislator's voting behavior. For example, a large exogenous increase in electoral strength for the Democratic party in a district does not result in shifting both parties' nominees to the left. Politicians' inability to credibly commit to a compromise appears to dominate any competition-induced convergence in policy. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The Neighbourhood is Not What it Used to be Raaum, Oddbjørn; Salvanes, Kjell G.; Sørensen, Erik Ø.
The Economic journal (London),
01/2006, Letnik:
116, Številka:
508
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Using a variance decomposition framework that bounds the effect of families and neighbourhoods, we find important effects of family characteristics and residential location on adult education and ...earnings in Norway. Neighbourhoods are less important than families, as the correlations among siblings are significantly higher than among children growing up in the same local community. The impact of neighbourhoods is reduced by half from 1960 to 1970. We link this result to several policy changes in the 1960s aimed at increasing equality of opportunity in Norway. Neighbour correlations in Norway are found to be significantly lower than in the US.
A major challenge in testing spatial, interinstitutional models is placing different sets of actors on a common preference scale. We address this challenge by presenting a random effects, panel ...probit method which we use to estimate the ideal points of presidents, senators, and Supreme Court justices on one scale. These estimates are comparable across time and institutions. We contrast our method with previously used methods and show that our method increases the ability to study interactions among different institutions.
Annual growth rates of real GDP in New Zealand have varied widely, from 18% to −8%, since World War II. During this period the tax burden (the ratio of tax revenue to GDP) has trended upward from 23% ...to 35%. The tax mix (the ratio of indirect taxes to direct taxes) has varied between 0.31 and 0.75, having increased recently with the introduction of the goods and services tax. In this paper we estimate a combination of the tax burden and the tax mix which would maximise the rate of growth of real GDP. We find that such a tax structure would have a time-varying tax burden with a mean of 22.5%, and a time-varying tax mix with a mean of 0.54, which implies a mean share of direct taxes in total tax revenue of 65%. We also find that a move to such a tax structure would generate nearly a 17% increase in real GDP, and while this increase would yield a 6% reduction in tax revenue to the Treasury, it would deliver a 27% increase in purchasing power to the remainder of the economy. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001
Inflation and Exchange Rate Regimes in Mexico Li, Carmen A.; Philippopoulos, Apostolis; Tzavalis, Elias
Review of development economics,
February 2000, Letnik:
4, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The paper presents a version of the exchange‐rate‐regime model of inflation. Quarterly data from Mexico from 1946 to 1995 are used to estimate and test a simultaneous‐equation model for wage ...inflation, price inflation and industrial production, taking account of the Lucas critique and the statistical properties of the data. The main finding is that, after the fall of the fixed‐exchange‐rate regime in 1976, there was a Barro–Gordon type inflation bias owing to the inability of policymakers to commit to low inflation. There is no significant evidence of political business cycles in inflation.
We study whether regulation, after controlling for several explanatory variables, has influenced the total factor productivity (TFP) growth of U.S. commercial banking during 1946–1995. We report: 1) ...that the overall impact on TFP growth of regulation has been negative; 2) that the FDIA of 1950, the CEBA of 1987, the DIA of 1982, and the DIDMCA of 1980 have been the most influential regulatory initiatives; 3) that TFP growth has been negatively related to both population growth and real GDP growth, and 4) weak evidence that technological investment has been positively related to TFP growth.
The private equity market: an overview Fenn, George W; Liang, Nellie; Prowse, Stephen
Financial markets, institutions & instruments,
01/1997, Letnik:
6, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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